Two hundred ninety-four thousand dollars is a lot of money, particularly when it isn’t budgeted, but the decision of the Jackson County Industrial Development Authority, Jackson County Water and Sewerage Authority and Jackson County Board of Commissioners to spend that sum is well warranted.

The money will fund the second phase of a county water analysis and (hopefully) determine where the next drinking water reservoir will be built.

The ongoing drought made that decision relatively easy. Jackson County will need more water within a relatively short time. The hard decision will come when that study produces a cost estimate.

The reservoir will be very expensive, and since Jackson County is nowhere close to using its allotment from the Bear Creek Reservoir, there may be some strong arguments for putting the project on hold. After all, county debt has grown substantially, and nobody can be sure how long the current economic difficulties will last and how severe they may get in the future. Convincing the elected officials, let alone the public, to invest tens of millions of borrowed dollars will be difficult.
Those discussions will be the province of the next board of commissioners. It may be that economic conditions will delay the construction of a reservoir, but a delay not only just postpones the inevitable, but it also makes it more expensive. Assuming that the study does result in the selection of a site for a county reservoir, at the very least Jackson County should acquire the property.

This drought will end, but we can’t afford to grow complacent once the watering restrictions are over. Having a reservoir site locked down is the minimum response Jackson County can afford if it expects to be able to handle the next dry spell.

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